What Is the American Dream? Getting Great at Your Craft

As I was founding my nonprofit organization, I was part of a mentorship program geared towards connecting new leaders from younger organizations with established leaders. My mentor for the program is now my friend, Dr. Arthur Brooks. Arthur is a very accomplished French horn player who left the musician’s life in his early thirties to study economics and earn his PhD. After specializing in nonprofit management, and researching philanthropy and happiness, he became the president of a DC think tank. On that job he helped grow the organization in visibility and impact, doubled their revenue, and conducted a successful capital campaign to buy a building. Afterwards he left for Harvard to become a happiness guru, and in between the think tank tenure and his current academic career, he has managed to publish six books, the latest one with Oprah Winfrey.

That is all very impressive, but what I was interested in during my mentorship was finding out from Arthur how he became such a great public speaker. If you have ever heard a talk by Arthur or read one of his many books, you’ll understand why I asked that question. But if not, make sure to catch his Ted Talk or see his movie, The Pursuit.

During our first mentorship meeting, I asked Arthur, “How did you become such a great public speaker?” I wasn’t expecting a silver bullet to make me a miraculous speaker overnight, but I was hoping to get specific information on his process, some gold standards, tips for preparation, coaches I could turn to, etc. However, the response Arthur gave me was simple, humbling, and inspiring. He just said, “Practice” . . . that I would become a great public speaker too, if I gave 250 talks a year just like he did. He said that I should scout out and accept every opportunity to give a talk. There is no quick fix.

On one occasion, Arthur was practicing a new talk he was about to give on the speaking circuit. He called in a group of colleagues and friends (myself included) to give him feedback on the talk. I didn’t check back with Arthur afterwards to see how the circuit tour went, but I imagine it went well, as that talk became his bestselling book Strength to Strength.

I learned that before giving a public talk, Arthur practices over and over in more private settings. His “recipe,” if you will, for perfecting his craft (speeches) is practice, trial and error, doing many repetitions, and learning by doing. No shortcuts or silver bullets.

Another, more informal mentor I look up to is economist Tyler Cowen. Tyler doesn’t need any introduction either, but if you want one, I recommend this latest piece The Economist did on him. I didn’t ask Tyler for specific mentoring tips, even though he is an academic advisor to the organization I lead, so I certainly consult with him from time to time. But I learn from him just by observing and studying him as much as I can. What impresses me the most about Tyler is not the accolades he’s received but his consistency, trying to push himself to be the best at his craft as a public intellectual, and his sheer curiosity. Tyler has always been smart, and I would think it was expected that he would achieve great things.

But one of the remarkable datapoints about him, and relevant to this post, is that for the last twenty-five years he has blogged every day. Yes, you read that right: he hasn’t missed one day on his blog, Marginal Revolution. He’s blogged about anything and everything. Sharing his knowledge with the world, and sharing what others share with him. At the same time, along with his blog co-author Alex Tabarrok, he started an online university called Marginal Revolution University. Tyler also started a great podcast, Conversations with Tyler, and an amazing grant program to identify young and emerging talent called Emergent Ventures.

Tyler and Arthur are getting great at their craft through repetition, consistency, and just sheer hard work. That’s what the American Dream requires. If you meet Arthur or Tyler now you would think it was bound to happen; just look at how talented they are! Of course they would succeed! But I think they would be the first to say that to get to where they are they had to do a lot of work, a lot of repetition of speeches, writing, researching, and positioning their outputs in the market—in this case the market of ideas. I don’t know if doing what they’re doing now is their own American Dream (I should just ask them), but for me they’re certainly living the dream in pursuing a life of meaning through their work.

I’ve always admired them because of that, but it came to mind recently when Timothée Chalamet won the Screen Actors Guild Award. In his acceptance speech for his acting on A Complete Unknown, depicting the life of Bob Dylan (who, from what I hear, was also an American Original and dreamer), Chalamet discussed the work he needed to do for that movie, highlighting again the persistence, consistency, and wanting to excel that is part of getting great at one’s craft. In his inspirational speech Chalamet said,

I know we’re in a subjective business, but the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats. I’m inspired by the greats. I’m inspired by the greats here tonight. I’m as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there. So I’m deeply grateful. This doesn’t signify that, but it’s a little more fuel. It’s a little more ammo to keep going. Thank you so much.

You can go further back and think about classic examples of being great at your craft, and you find the same thing: consistency, repetition, and practice. Sports are always a good source of these examples and stories, starting with people like Michael Jordan, whom Chalamet highlighted. Jordan always kept track of how many games he lost and shots he missed. One of his most famous quotes is this:

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

This must have been earlier in his career as the total tally came to 12,345 missed shots. One of his iconic ads, and my favorite, highlighted how his achievements started through practice, consistency, and hard work.

The same could certainly be said of Kobe Bryant who said,

If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns, whether important or not, and they spread themselves out. That’s totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody.

Changing sports to another great: Tom Brady has similar thoughts about consistency and practice in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech:

But understand this, life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and hits and bruises along the way. And my advice is to prepare yourself because football lessons teach us that success and achievement come from overcoming adversity, and that team accomplishment far exceeds anyone’s individual goals. To be successful at anything, the truth is you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t. Consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. No shortcuts.

To become great at their craft, these people needed hard work, repetition, and humility to continue improving. That is the essence of the pursuit of the American Dream as well. It is not easy to pursue it, but we all have the agency to try to achieve greatness and achieve our dreams. There are no shortcuts to getting great at your craft. It doesn’t come without suffering and hard times as well, so all this work and the pursuit of the American Dream is certainly not without a commitment to going through some tough times.

Fortunately, examples abound around us all the time of people striving to be great at their crafts. The examples I shared are some of the most well-known ones. But the American Dream inspires millions across the country to just be the best at whatever they want to be: being great parents; pursuing great friendships; trying to help others; being great bakers or florists; or just trying to fix an intractable world problem like water pollution. And one doesn’t need to think about it as achieving the end goal of being “the greatest”; you can just work to improve your craft—whatever it is—and pursue it to your fullest human potential one day at a time, without being distraught if you don’t achieve the goal right away, as long as you’re always moving forward.

The American Dream is about the journey as much as the destination. But regardless of the particular journey or the destination, the key thing about the American Dream is that it is only achieved through exercising your agency and pursuing a better, richer, and fuller life—whatever that means to you.